Never really thought about this and subsequently never drug a torque wrench under a vehicle during an oil change. I've never stripped an oil drain plug. Is kind-of-tight quantifiable?

I never really thought about it either after decades of working on my vehicles, but I have a tendency to tighten everything until my wrench breaks or I pull a muscle and there is nothing worse than taking a simple, routine job and turning it into a time consuming nightmare with a stripped bolt. The new oil pans are made of aluminum, with a steel bolt and those aluminum threads will strip a lot quicker than the old iron pans. Maybe I am getting lazy in my old age or possibly wiser but I find myself using a torque wrench for a lot more jobs where the wrong outcome could be disastrous and/or expensive.

stupid question, how can I make this into a pdf (it is originally a table in DealerWorld) so I can post it on the Wiki???

I highlighted all of the information and right clicked to copy it, then opened up an Excel spreadsheetand pasted it in Excel. Once you get it there you can organize, modify or do whatever you want withit. Then save it as a filename of your choice, in the location of your choice and your done.You can also save it in Word, wordpad or any other program of your choice. I used Excel because I find it easierto manipilate & modify.

Ok, I have to chime in on this one. Even if there is a torque spec for an oil pan drain plug, that torque spec will be most likely for dry threads, and that will not be the case here. Oiled threads will decrease the friction in threads to the point where the preload on the bolt will be practically twice as high as if the threads were dry. About 90% of torque applied to a bolt goes toward overcoming the friction in the threads, and only 10% toward the bolt elongation (in the elastic range).

Translation: do not torque oil pan drain plugs. Only tighten snug with a short ratchet/socket. This is especially important with aluminum oil pans. I tell you, there is a lot of unhappy guys on motorcycle forums who have stripped the threads in their expensive aluminum oil pans by trying to torque the drain plug to "spec".

There is a rubber lined washer under the drain plug. You need to only compress that rubber on the washer sufficiently to get a good seal and tighten the plug enough so it will not back out due to vibration. If an aluminum sealing washer is used, tighten the plug just enough to cut a small groove int he aluminum washer, which will create a positive seal. Do not reuse grooved aluminum or cooper washers, as they may leak if you do not line up the groove right.

I have done hundreds of oil changes on all kinds of vehicles and never stripped the plug threads or had a leak using my method. And I always replace aluminum sealing washers with new ones.